The First Mile
It's early Saturday morning and I'm feeling pleasantly level headed, which is still a novelty after the lion share of the last ~6+ months. I would take back the overwhelming anxiety if it would spare the world the current political situation, but that's not an option and so I shall at least be grateful I'm of a mind to do something about it rather than mentally frozen in terror. Considering the flow of information into my brain has, at minimum, quadrupled, it's particularly good my processing power has ramped back up to functional. Juggling being informed with self-care and other responsibilities has suddenly become an Olympic level sport.
I feel like I need Remedial Civics 101 at this point, with particular emphasis on the structure of the evecutive and legislative branches of government and how they interact, bonus points for how it's actually played out in practice, including the last 16 years. (If anyone has a good link for that, please share.) This truly is going to be a marathon and I can't learn and understand it even half way as well as I want to overnight but there are still things I can do now. So I have a spreadsheet started with my congressional reps and I made phone calls this week (the heart pounding was annoying - why is this so weirdly scary?!? - but I powered through).
I've paid for digital subscriptions to several newspapers in an effort to stay more informed and in a bid to support print journalism: the New York Times (expensive, but main stream media in the thick of it), the Toledo Blade (most local, large newspaper), and The Nation (I'm under the impression it's more independent than NYT). The Washington Post I already get emails from, but if I convert my Blade subscription to a print version then a digital sub to WaPo is included. I would like to also add The Guardian and possibly The New Yorker in the next couple of months. Ish. Once I get over wincing at the cost of the NYT in particular and thinking of organizations that money could have been donated to instead. One task for today is running all of those through my feed reader so that I can actually process them in a coherent fashion on a daily basis.
I've definitely realized my main interest is focused on politics in general and voting rights/access in particular, so this weekend one of the things on the to do list is looking into and registering to volunteer with the local/state/national Democrats. The Ohio Dems have already set up a volunteer form link with a call to arms, so to speak, and I have put my name in there, but I'm assuming everybody's still getting their feet under them in terms of what they're actually going to do and how to use new volunteers. So that's going to be a work in progress for a bit.
Really though, one of my A+ life choices this week was reading a 210,000 word, virtually-all-fluff, Merlin fic chapter by chapter on my phone in between... everything. I mean there's pining, there's even some drama, but basically it was a long, super low stress read, and absolutely perfect for this week: And like the cycle of the year, we begin again by katherynefromphilly - Arthur returns after 1,500 years and Merlin is waiting.
Now I need to package up a few items and get changed so I can make it in town to the post office before noon and then head to the rec center for a few miles on the treadmill. After that, home and the day mostly off to instead work on all the tabs in my browser, the links piled up in email, and installing Linux Mint to dual boot with Windows. And laundry, let's not forget laundry.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)
I feel like I need Remedial Civics 101 at this point, with particular emphasis on the structure of the evecutive and legislative branches of government and how they interact, bonus points for how it's actually played out in practice, including the last 16 years. (If anyone has a good link for that, please share.) This truly is going to be a marathon and I can't learn and understand it even half way as well as I want to overnight but there are still things I can do now. So I have a spreadsheet started with my congressional reps and I made phone calls this week (the heart pounding was annoying - why is this so weirdly scary?!? - but I powered through).
I've paid for digital subscriptions to several newspapers in an effort to stay more informed and in a bid to support print journalism: the New York Times (expensive, but main stream media in the thick of it), the Toledo Blade (most local, large newspaper), and The Nation (I'm under the impression it's more independent than NYT). The Washington Post I already get emails from, but if I convert my Blade subscription to a print version then a digital sub to WaPo is included. I would like to also add The Guardian and possibly The New Yorker in the next couple of months. Ish. Once I get over wincing at the cost of the NYT in particular and thinking of organizations that money could have been donated to instead. One task for today is running all of those through my feed reader so that I can actually process them in a coherent fashion on a daily basis.
I've definitely realized my main interest is focused on politics in general and voting rights/access in particular, so this weekend one of the things on the to do list is looking into and registering to volunteer with the local/state/national Democrats. The Ohio Dems have already set up a volunteer form link with a call to arms, so to speak, and I have put my name in there, but I'm assuming everybody's still getting their feet under them in terms of what they're actually going to do and how to use new volunteers. So that's going to be a work in progress for a bit.
Really though, one of my A+ life choices this week was reading a 210,000 word, virtually-all-fluff, Merlin fic chapter by chapter on my phone in between... everything. I mean there's pining, there's even some drama, but basically it was a long, super low stress read, and absolutely perfect for this week: And like the cycle of the year, we begin again by katherynefromphilly - Arthur returns after 1,500 years and Merlin is waiting.
Now I need to package up a few items and get changed so I can make it in town to the post office before noon and then head to the rec center for a few miles on the treadmill. After that, home and the day mostly off to instead work on all the tabs in my browser, the links piled up in email, and installing Linux Mint to dual boot with Windows. And laundry, let's not forget laundry.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)